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An anonymous reader writes with this snippet from CBC News: " It's not often that Canadian real estate listings make international headlines, but a mid-sized Alberta bungalow has people around the world buzzing today after its owner declared that he would like to sell it — for Bitcoins. If successful, 22-year-old entrepreneur Taylor More would be the first person ever to accept the fast-rising virtual currency in exchange for property. 'My home is being traded for Bitcoins!' reads the listing for More's 'quaint' two bedroom home in Crowsnest Pass, Alberta. ... The property is listed for $405,000 CDN, but More writes that 'the price can be reduced" if a buyer has some Bitcoins to spare.'"

"Bitcoins are really hard to get your hands on if you want to get them in large quantities," he told the BBC when asked why he decided to accept the currency for his home. "I have a couple projects that I want to get started, and they will take a lot of Bitcoins."

So it sure sound like he will accept at least quite a large part in Bitcoins. The article states that the priced asked for currently equal about 5300 Bitcoin.

Speaking of cahoots with Silk Road. I recently completed a job application for a large local utility and they apparently have outsourced their application information gathering to Silk Road. Somebody sent me a direct link to the job posting on silk road, and I did not click it. Instead, I went to the corporate web site and followed the job listings down to the application, which sent me to the same address on silk road.

At least he does not accept the full price in Bitcoin. There seems to be some hope for him left.

Well there's some hope left for the sale of the house. I highly doubt you can buy and sell land and using some random exchange technology not being legal tender. How would the govt. calculate the stamp duty for a start?

I guess it depends where you live. Around here, when you sell a house, your legal document says something like "in exchange for one dollar and other considerations." Don't worry, the taxman still somehow figures out the real purchase price. I'm sure the same thing happens if you did it with bitcoin. They'd just translate it to dollars or CDN in this case.

Yes, thank you for pointing out that there are a multitude of other extremely unlikely events that could have led to this 22 year old owning a house with no mortgage. I didn't think I needed to explicitly state each and every one of them for the point I was making.

In a random sampling of 22 year olds, how many do you actually think would be in a position to own a house without a mortgage?

22 year olds don't pay off their mortgages. His dad was an NHL player and the house came from his mothers family. He didn't work for it. There are lots of young punks in Alberta that inherited houses and land when the grandparents died and no one wants to move back to the farm or small town so they sell it. And since the housing boom in 2005 land prices went up rediculiously in small towns thanks to immigration and temporary foreign residents. Most people in Alberta are up to their eyeballs in debt it is expensive to live and wages have dropped steadily or the last 5 years because so many foreign resident live here. They cram 10 - 15 people in a house and under cut the local contractors and work for less wages than locals so they can squirrel away a few dollars to send home, the place with the high exchange rate they came from. A job that paid $35/hr 5 years ago pays $20-$25 now. Where I live milk is $7 a gallon, bannanas are almost $1/lb, a single cucumber is $2. I live in a town with 420 houses. 50 are currently for sale. Half the local bussnesses have shut down. Everyone wants to move but you can't sell your house.

This isn't exactly representative but isn't too far off, either. The cost of living is commesurately high in comparison to the economy's strength. Unless you're in business, or working directly in the construction or oil industries, you're probably relatively poor.

If you Canadians had polled the First Peoples on whether or not to allow mass immigration, how might they have voted? Would this have been racist on the part of the First Peoples, seeing that they were denying themselves the benefits of diversity? Why or why not?

Where should I move my ancestors came from Europe in the late 1800's. Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Turkey, Mongolia. Now my children have English, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Turkey, Mongolia, Germain, and a bit of Cree (native). I wonder what mine or my childrens country of origin is and what country of origin me and my children should move back to?

Well hopefully you're not telling present immigrants to go back to where they came from, then you don't have a problem.:)

Being a mutt (I am too) and coming here a couple hundred years ago doesn't give you entitlement over first nations and it doesn't give you entitlement to tell other immigrants like you that they should "go back to where they came from" or the right to complain about immigration.

No arguement there. Except the natives in my area are from Ontario they displaced and killed the original natives in the 1700's when they migrated looking for furs a hundred before my ancestors arrived. My ancestors were farmers they bought land from the gov, cleared the trees and planted crops.What I do have a problem with is immigrants (residents not citizens) coming here and undercutting on jobs I bid on just to get the job. The immigrants in my area average 6 kids plus (one familly in my community has 1

Not where I live, but I truly believe you are making this bullshit up as you go along. "Where I live milk is $7 a gallon, bannanas are almost $1/lb". --Clearly you don't live in Alberta then. Milk has been sold in litres here for more than 35 years. Likewise bananas in kg, not pounds. I call you out on your lies! 10-15 people in a house is illegal. And I don't know which part of Alberta you are talking about "420 houses, 50 are for sale", but not any place I can think of has that. Most places have a

Killing people is illegal. Bet noone ever gets killed. I was over at my Vietnamese neibours in Oshawa Ont. there were 4 families living in a 1200 sq/ft house in the suburbs. They had the house divided with blankets hanging from the ceiling.

It may not be common for a 22 year old to pay off his own mortgage or just buy a house with cash (and evidently not in this case) but it's not unheard of. He could have been a teen Olympian with a big post-Games endorsement deal, a pop singer, or that British kid who just sold his app to Yahoo for $30 million.

The asking price is redonculously high for Crowsnest Pass. Fyi it is nowhere near the oilpatch - in size of Texas units for americans, It's about the same as driving from Corpus Christi to Kansas City. Much of it on secondary routes.

My first thought was tax evasion, but currency manipulation seems more likely now that I've looked up the MLS listings in Crowsnest Pass.

Also that area is known for having a lot of tax refuser/corporation sole/"free person"/gold standard etc nutjobs because for a while it was of

Just to be sure, not all tax refusers and gold-standard advocates are nutjobs (what's "corporation sole" or "free person" in this context? Those are new terms for me.).

A tax protester who is willing to go to prison for tax evasion in the same way that George Washington et al were willing to be executed for treason is not a nutjob, he's just a person who has extreme (in the USA at least) minority political views and who is willing to stand by them. Now, a tax protester who expects to win in court, well, ye

Remember folks, having minority or fringe views is not the hallmark of a nut-job. Having such a distorted view of reality that you don't see the world as it is is. When determining if someone is a nut-job in the political sense, a test is whether they are seeing an illusionary world that will listen to them and change once they "hear the gospel truth" when that is clearly not the case.

The corporation sole and "free person" nutjobs are the ones that are nutjobs.

The corporation sole nutjobs believe that if you write to any regent (King, Queen, or Pope) and put "Coropration Sole" as your job title and their staff respond then it makes you not subject to the laws of any country (nor international law) since you have been recognised as a regent (never mind that the constitution of pretty much every country makes the head of state subject to the law too).

This fella needs some form of psychiatric evaluation. Question is, am I alone?

No, the usual astroturfers began posting their FUD right away. Which rises the question: are they employed by governments or banks? In other words, which fears Bitcoin more: governments, for not being able to inflate the currency, or the banks, for no longer being able to nickel-and-dime people? Or am I ignoring the most obvious culprit: VISA, for no longer being able to tax all online transactions?

Right, because anyone who thinks Bitcoin is dumb must be a shill for some shadowy interest that fears its potential.

No, but anyone who posts on a Bitcoin story explaining how dumb he thinks it is probably has some kind of reason for it. And an organized FUD campaign is certainly a plausible explanation for the amount and vehemency of such posts.

Just like anyone who thinks Bitcoin is good must be a speculator who's working to further his pump-and-dump scheme.

No, but anyone who posts on a Bitcoin story explaining how dumb he thinks it is probably has some kind of reason for it. And an organized FUD campaign is certainly a plausible explanation for the amount and vehemency of such posts... The difference is that the people who advocate Bitcoin have a plausible non-sinister reason for doing so: they want to use it. It is harder to see what the motivation of someone who calls for mental evaluation of someone for using it might be, besides spreading FUD.

Seriously? This is the INTERNET. Anybody can voice their opinion about anything, anywhere, anytime. As far as the motivations of detractors... if you seriously can't tell why some people might be a bit wary of a non-government backed, largely unregulated currency that's recognized in only limited locations, you need to step back from the Kool-Aid bowl for a minute.

As far as the motivations of detractors... if you seriously can't tell why some people might be a bit wary of a non-government backed, largely unregulated currency that's recognized in only limited locations, you need to step back from the Kool-Aid bowl for a minute.

I understand perfectly well why people might be wary. Being wary is different from trying to convince everyone else to not use the thing. That latter part is suspicious.

I don't know about the conspiracy. It is odd that so many are openly hostile toward Bitcoin. I can see why people find it compelling and would want others to adopt it but I'm sure I see why anyone would have an interest in actively discouraging it other than entrenched financial abusers. None of those are conspiracies. Government currency manipulation, bank nickel and diming, and VISA conflicting business interests aren't secret or open for debate they are public and obvious facts that aren't denied by the

Lets say you want to buy a wireless router or a house. You look at the price in Bitcoins based on todays BTC/USD value and buy enough bitcoins in the market and pay for the item. It really doesn't make a difference what the value of the BTC currency is or if the price is BTC or USD, the only differences is that 1) paying in BTC requires an extra step to get and 2) it's much simpler to actually pay/move the money when you have the BTC. I have no problem selling anything in BTC, including my apartment, since BTC is as good as / better than any fiat paper currency.

Every central bank has a monopoly on issuing its national currency, so it is all monopoly money. Can you point to any nation with a competitive market for currency?

In fact, Bitcoin is the opposite of monopoly money, as it does have competitors, and is open-source itself, so other people can set up competing versions by modifying the source code. This has already been done.